Can we splash a second color AND play Solitude?
Added 2023-07-03 21:06:57 +0000 UTCUnfortunately, I don’t believe that we can afford to play both Solitude AND have the mana work with a splash color. You can definitely make it work, but if you want the requisite 11+ blue sources, you have to make some real concessions in how you build your mana; you effectively have to go up to 23 lands, cut all the canopy lands, and cut at least 1 Inkmoth. The Emeria’s Calls, coupled with the necessity of a fetch/shock manabase means that you WILL lose close games due to the amount of damage you do to yourself. For reference, I tried both a UW build and a WB build, and I lost to burn for the first time in a long time by 1-2 life points each time.
To expand on this with actual lists:
Lonely Hammer Mana (22 lands)
4 Saga
3 Inkmoth
4 Emeria’s Call
10 Plains
1 Canopy Land
Non-lonely UW Hammer manabase (22 lands)
4 Saga
3 Inkmoth
1 Canopy Land
3 Plains
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Seachrome Coast
6 Fetchlands
You can see here we have 15 White sources in Lonely, and 15 White + 11 Blue Sources in UW. Here is what we would be looking at if we wanted to keep these color counts the same while still getting the Calls in there:
Lonely UW (22 lands)
4 Saga
3 Inkmoth
4 Emeria’s Call
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Seachrome Coast
6 Fetchlands
Does this manabase technically work? Yes. Is it incredibly painful? Also yes. Also, it cannot beat a Blood Moon. So let’s try something a bit greedier, which still requires adding a land (23 lands)
4 Saga
2 Inkmoth
4 Emeria’s Call
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Plains
3 Seachrome Coast
6 Fetchlands
If you really wanted to play Solitude AND splash, I think you would realistically have to do something like this (23 lands)
4 Saga
1 Inkmoth
4 Emeria’s Call
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Plains
3 Seachrome Coast
6 Fetchlands
(22 lands)
4 Saga
4 Emeria’s Call
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Plains
3 Seachrome Coast
6 Fetchlands
While this works, losing consistent access to Inkmoth kills is simply not worth the trade-off in my opinion.
Tl;dr: I don't believe it is optimal to splash a second color in a Solitude build.
Comments
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Travis Brown
2024-01-12 13:23:01 +0000 UTCWhat are your thoughts on running pathway lands for a green splash for haywire mite? I ran a version of your list with 1 haywire mite and replaced 4 plains with 4 copies of the GW pathway. Going to give it a go at a local FNM.
Martin Bautista
2024-01-12 05:46:37 +0000 UTC